I’ve read 9 other novels by Kerouac (7 of which I’ve given 4+ stars), and consider him one of my favorite authors, but ‘Visions of Cody’ is a tough go. The first couple of chapters are uneven, but have some nice passages in the impressionist (or perhaps modern art) manner that Kerouac paints, with him bumming around New York and thinking of his friend Cody (Neal Cassady). His friendship with Cassady was so deep that in a letter to him he effused that he was his “lover”, that he “loves you and digs your greatness completely – haunted in the mind by you”. He’s lonely, thinking about life, reading Joyce, Proust, Melville, and Céline, doing a variety of drugs, and trying to scrape up a way of getting out to San Francisco. All of that sounds pretty interesting, but even so it’s pretty dense mining the nuggets of gold out of his stream of consciousness passages.

Where the novel breaks down for me, however, is chapter 3, featuring a 130 page transcript of Kerouac and Cassady high on marijuana, rambling on about nothing in particular. In the book’s notes, Allen Ginsberg does a phenomenal job describing why he finds this section compelling in six points (briefly summarized: 1. ‘Teahead’ talk and never before been transcribed and examined, 2. Despite monotony, the gaps and changes are dramatic, 3. It leads somewhere, 4. It is interesting if you know and love the characters, 5. It’s real, and 6. It’s art and relevant to progress in Kerouac’s art). That sounds fantastic but reading it is not, and it’s followed by 90 more pages of an “Imitation of the Tape”. There are some nice bits towards the end of the book, but it’s just tough to recover from this big block in the middle, which while heralded as a radical, experimental form, is to me an incoherent, literal transcript of a couple of guys getting high. It pains me to say this, but you can do much better with his other books. ( )

Hard to read unless you're really familiar with Kerouac's writing style and the beat generation mythology. Experimental. ( )

I've enjoyed a lot of Kerouac on a fleeting basis - I was told 'On the Road' and 'Dharma Bums' were THE BOOKs to read. Lo and behold, it turns out those were just the commercial pop singles for an artist whose real masterpieces are the obscure deep album cuts.

My Desert Island Kerouac books are this and 'Doctor Sax,' for sheer aural sensual beauty. ( )

Read this many years ago, but it seemed to be a better, fuller, and more free treatment of some of the themes and characters of On The Road. Pure example of the Beat ideal of jazz-influenced writing with many thrilling, virtuoso passages and beautiful, lyrical moments.

Kerouac's supreme masterpiece. ( )